HÄFFELIN, KASIMIR von. - Cardinal, b. 3 Jan. 1737 at Minfeld (Palatinate), d. 27 Aug. 1827 in Rome. Court chaplain of the Palatinate in 1767, he moved to Munich in 1778 to the elector Carlo Teodoro of Bavaria. Titular bishop of Chersonesus in 1787, he was in Rome from 1796 to 1798 to manage the affairs of the Order of the Knights of Malta. He returned there in 1803 as chargé d’affaires for negotiations with the Holy See aimed at concluding a Concordat with Bavaria.
The Josephinist tendencies of the elector Massimiliano Giuseppe, and especially of his minister Montgelas, could not, however, be shared by the Holy See; consequently, the negotiations dragged on for several years and were finally broken off in 1809, after the French occupation of Rome. Accredited to the court of Naples until 1815, he returned to Rome with the Restoration and began new negotiations with Card. Consalvi, which led to the signing of the Bavarian Concordat of 1817. In Apr. 1818 Pio VII created H. cardinal.